I Dream of Justice

On Sunday, for the last day of HotDocs, I saw Migrant Dreams, a film about the precarious environment of foreign workers in Canada. Unsurprisingly, they are subjected to poor working conditions, exploitation, and predatory scams. The question period with long-time advocates made it clear that the documentary is meant as a call-to-arms for public engagement.

I don't know if this film can be a wake-up call for the average Canadian because it inadvertently presents worker exploitation as "their problem" and not "our problem". First, the main focus on the shadowy and double-dealing recruiter, because of his shared ethnicity with the workers, gives ammunition to the apologists similar to the usual "it's about black-on-black violence" argument. Second, without the power and prestige à la 60 minutes, they interviewed no Canadian employers, leaving them on the hook only for implied mis-behaviour. A short recording of a two-faced HR personnel, and the derision from the audience, suggests that more interviews with prevaricating employers would have gone a long way to cement the primary thesis: that it's the tacit complicity of these bosses that allow for these conditions to exist.